


The Story, Told

by ticketybye



Category: Good Omens (TV), House M.D., Scrubs (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: F/F, Gift Fic, I Don't Even Know, Light Angst, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, Snippets, Soulmates, Timeline What Timeline, Unresolved Romantic Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-29
Updated: 2020-10-29
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:08:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27271699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ticketybye/pseuds/ticketybye
Summary: It ends, as it began, in a garden.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens), Greg House/James Wilson, Perry Cox/John "JD" Dorian, Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Comments: 5
Kudos: 20





	The Story, Told

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tyrionsonoftywin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tyrionsonoftywin/gifts).



> Happy Birthday, my dear <3
> 
> (Dear Other Readers, this might make no sense to you and for that I apologise in advance.)

The first time I see him, I think, _dark_.

It’s not what he’s wearing, specifically - it’s more of a _look_ , the downward twist of his lips, the nervous twitch of his elegant hands. _Something terrible must have happened to him_ , I think, and it doesn’t at all occur to me that he might have deserved it. No, that is simply not possible, not with this sad little smile he’s giving me, these honeyed words:

“Oh, you’re an angel,” and because he says so, I am; “I don’t think you _can_ do the wrong thing,” and because he says so, it is true.

I have only existed for a few months. Well - it might be rather more than that, but time itself has only existed for that long. I haven’t given time much thought so far, but it seems somewhat important now. _A few months_ have passed between me existing and us meeting. _A few minutes_ have passed since I first saw him. How long until he leaves, or I do? How long until I see him again?

A drop on my forehead interrupts my questioning. Another. And another and another, and it seems suddenly crucial to me that he stay dry. So I shelter him, his angular body close enough to mine that I can think, _warm_. That I can conclude, glancing at his fiery head, his earnest golden eyes, _not too dark, after all_.

But then, he reaches for my hand, and I move mine away. I dissimulate, pretending I was going to play with my ring all along. I have only existed for a few months, and already I have learned accessorising and denial. He looks away, clears his throat, and crushes me with a wave of bitter disappointment.

It’s stopped raining.

“Well”, he says, and makes a few weird noises, “good talk.” He nods curtly and turns around, moves my wing away delicately, and walks away. Just like that. Does not look back. My wing tingles where he touched it.

“Goodbye”, I say to his slowly disappearing shoulders; _see you very soon_ , I think, not yet knowing that I will, indeed.

—

The second time - _is this really you?_ \- he’s beating up a corpse with a cane, and so I think, _you must be having a terrible time, still_.

In truth, I’m not sure who he is just yet, and have lost myself too, somewhere along the way; in scorching sand and in the wounds of men I’d grown to love. For the moment, then, we are but two men taking each other in and wondering where they’ve seen each other before.

“You’ll do,” he says, and though I don’t know what he means, I find myself thinking, _God help me, but you too, you’ll do splendidly_.

He is dangerous, maddening, addicting. His mind, oh, his mind is like nothing I have seen before! At times I am overcome by the wild desire to crawl inside his skull. He is also petty and childish, for that matter. Sometimes he will not talk to me for days, save for orders and poorly-conceived insults; he will drive away any woman who so much as looks at me; he will experiment - or so he says to justify the abominations he produces - with the fresh food I buy with my hard-earned money.

He will destroy himself, if I only let him.

I keep dreaming about a garden, whenever my war-ridden nightmares spare me. In the dream, I don’t know who I am, but I know him, and I know he needs me. I shelter him from the rain and wish I could do more. As I watch him walk away, I tremble with the wretched thought that there will be storms, and that I won’t be there to carry him through all of them.

Whenever I dream this dream, I wake up to the sound of his violin. I walk downstairs, sit in my chair, and watch him play. I try not to think about the box of poison somewhere in the room, concealed in plain sight. About the monsters of his I’m unable to slay. This is what I do best, after all, watching him. Bearing witness to him. Making sure the world knows that there once was a Sherlock Holmes, and that he saved me just as much as I saved him.

Except I don’t save him, not this time. One day, all too soon, I stand under pouring rain alone and he’s gone where I couldn’t follow. Of all the thoughts I could think, absurdly, the one that stands out is, _I never held your hand_.

—

I am a doctor again the third time. I don’t think I’ve ever been anything else.

By the time I meet him, I’m starting to think life is a pretty dire affair. Thirty years old and a divorce under my belt. The majority of my day spent helplessly watching people die, though that’s nobody’s fault but mine, my masochistic choice of specialty. And currently, to add insult to injury, sitting in a cell for a Billy Joel song.

“You can go, Dr Wilson. You’ve been bailed out.”

“What? By whom?”

“Some Gregory House. Friend of yours, he said.”

I don’t know a Gregory House, and yet, _fuck_ , as soon as I see him, _I do_.

It’s the same smirk, the same haunted but curious eyes.

_Same as what?_

Later, inside a glass of whiskey, he explains, “you were the only interesting person at that conference. And I was bored.” I watch the graceful movement of his throat as he swallows. “Needed someone to drink with,” he adds, and possibly I am just imagining the way he flushes up to his ears. Projecting the hunger he’s just awakened in me, which I’d long since put to sleep.

“You’re not too bad yourself,” I go, too drunk to acknowledge the flirt in it.

It’s amazing, how much can _not_ happen in such a long friendship. The number of times we get spectacularly drunk, just the two of us, and don’t have sex. The jealousy, his, so _pointless_ \- why complain about my girlfriends if you will not claim me? Because I am, entirely, here for the claiming. The arguments, the falling-outs that end always in forgiveness and never in kissing.

It’s scary, how much I want him. Ancient and scary. It makes me sick to my stomach.

I leave him, this time, not the other way around. _What time?_

I never believed my patients, when they told me the worst of it was leaving their families, the loves of their lives. I do now. He helplessly watches me die, this time, _what time?_ \- him, the healer, the magician, the genius. Of all the people _I_ am the one he could not save, and yet he chose to be here.

I’m going to close my eyes, now. I tell him. “I think I’m going to sleep.” He’s holding me for the first time in forever.

“See you soon,” I think I hear him say. Then, all is dark.

—

The fourth time, we don’t even get to be best friends.

Here I am, lying in the dark in an on-call room, trying to sleep but thinking about him instead. This is not new. I am _exhausted_ , because of work, because of him, because of the realisations that came crushing down around me in the space of a week.

These are the things we can do fuck-all about: death, and love. The first, I thought I could beat when I got into med school. The second, I thought I had under control until I met him. This grumpy old man, with his gravelly voice and cold eyes. Mistreating an unconscious man. Reminded me of something I couldn’t pin down.

 _You, again?_ I thought. “Hi, doctor,” I said instead.

In the space of a week, as I was saying, I’ve lost both battles. We've lost all the patients; I’ve realised I love him.

“I love him,” I whisper to the empty room, and then another time for good measure, “I love him.” Strange that I would come to this conclusion when he was at his most vulnerable: looking at me from under a blanket and struggling not to cry. It got me thinking about the first time we met. How different he seemed then. Competent and unfeeling; invincible. A superhero.

I could have fallen in love right there and then, but I didn’t. Go figure. Instead, I fell in love with a wonderful, sensitive man who’s so much better than I could ever be. Who cares enough about me to teach me not to care, not to get hurt. But he does. Get hurt, I mean. All the time. There’s so much pain in him that I wish I could heal. I could do that; I could take it away from him, carry it in his place. I’m stronger than he is.

This last thought almost makes me laugh. Do I even listen to myself? He would kill me if he heard me. _You? Stronger? What have you been taking, Samantha?_ But it’s true. It’s nobody’s fault, this is just what we’re meant to be. _I know you, Perry Cox. I’ve met you before. You’re not what you seem. And I was made to protect you._

I never tell him any of this. We live very long and disgustingly happy lives, and we do get to be together, in a way. We get Christmases and Thanksgivings, children, peace. Enough good moments alone that we know I was someone to him, and vice versa. It’s not enough, it’s never enough, but it’ll have to do.

One time, we are in my backyard and we’re watching the wives set the table inside. We’re meant to barbecue but are mostly drinking and teasing each other. “JD, do you every wish…” he says suddenly, then stops. He’s burning the steak. I can’t bring myself to care. “Wish what?”

“Do you ever wish things were different?”

For an insane moment I’m convinced we share one heart, and it’s stopped beating entirely. “How?”

“You know, that something… along the line… went differently. Whatever. Never mind.” The moment’s passed; he flips the steak. It sizzles, not unlike my heart - just mine, now.

“I do,” I say, hours later, right before he leaves. “All the time.” He doesn’t ask me what I mean; he remembers. “But maybe some other time.”

—

_Will this time be the one?_

There’s something I’ve been chasing. There’s a story that needs telling, or - better yet - that needs a proper ending, still. I would know; I am a storyteller, as a very dear character once said in a groundbreaking show, and I know damn well when I’m in one.

I’m waiting for her in a station. Sometimes I think that’s all I do, waiting. In these halfway places, places of people coming and going but never staying. People who have people to go or to return to. I never do, and perhaps it’s better that way, if a little lonely. She told me, recently, _I think for all that you complain about being alone, you’re scared of being with someone._

She’s right, I am. It’s easier to make up other people’s stories than to write my own. Some stories are best left unfinished. Some truths, some ancient and scary ones, are best kept hidden.

But what do I know? I catch a glimpse of her unruly hair and dark clothes in the crowd, and I almost want to pick the pen back up. She’s here, and she’s eerily familiar.

It ends, as it began, in a garden.

She’s sprawled next to me on a bench, serpentine and twitchy, and I’ve known the special language we are speaking forever. In these terrible times, there is something simple and good left, and it is this, right here. So I think, rather wildly, _is this it? We’ve watched the world spin and tumble to its end for millennia, so many of_ us _, shoulder to shoulder, is this where it’s all led us?_

I’ve barely finished the thought when she reaches for my hand. It’s just started raining and we have come so, so far.

 _It is_. I take heart; I reach back.


End file.
